The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy

Schmidt Number: S-1426

On-line since: 15th August, 2016

The Question of Women's Rights

Hamburg, 17th November 1906

It
may appear peculiar that spiritual science deals with such a
topic like the question of women's rights, an urgent question
that almost touches the issues of the day. For spiritual
science commonly looks for the deepest riddles of the human
existence and the world. One takes the view in many circles,
which deal with spiritual science, or in such circles, which
have heard something of the spirit of this worldview, that
spiritual science is said to be something that does not care
about the issues of the day, about the interests of the
immediate life. One believes — namely the one reproaches
that and the other credits it highly for it — that
spiritual science should deal only with the big questions of
the eternal that it should hover over the everyday events. One
regards it as something impractical in the good and in the bad
sense. However, if spiritual science should fulfil a task and
mission in our time, it must intervene in that which moves the
heart, and then it must be able to take a stand on those
questions, which influence our everyday thinking and our
everyday striving and hope. It must have a say in something
that takes place in our time. Why should it not be that today
the questions, which come as near to the human soul as the
question of women's rights, which should occupy us today, why
should it not be that a worldview assesses the big problems of
existence? One often criticises spiritual science just for this
rightly that it has not found the way to the real life praxis.
Nothing would be more wrong, if spiritual science led more and
more into an ascetic direction, in a direction hostile to life.
On the contrary, it will prove itself establishing a real basis
of the life praxis. It must not live in the cloud-cuckoo-land,
it must not lose itself in mere abstractions, and it must have
something to say to the present human beings.

Just as we have spoken here about the social question, we also
want to speak about the question of the women's rights from the
great cultural point of view, from the spiritual-scientific
point of view. Of course, nobody should imagine that spiritual
science speaks about the question of women's rights in the same
way as the day-to-day politics or journalism. However, one must
not believe that only that is practical which signifies a kind
of parish-pump politics.

Somebody has always turned out to be a real practitioner who is
able to look out at the immediate present. Who was the
practitioner at that time when in the last century the postage
stamp was invented and introduced in life which reshaped our
whole system of communications, our whole social life since
that time? It is somewhat more than fifty years ago. At that
time, the idea of this institution whose practical relevance
nobody doubts today did not come from a practitioner. The
Englishman Hill (Rowland H., 1795-1879) was no postal
practitioner. Someone who was a practitioner said these witty
words: one cannot believe that this institution can cause such
a big reversal in the system of communications; however, if it
were the case, the post-office buildings would no longer be
sufficient for the transportation of the letters.

Another example. When the first railway should be built from
Berlin to Potsdam, the general postmaster Nagler (Karl
Ferdinand Friedrich von N., 1770-1846) said, if people
absolutely want to pour their money down the drain, they should
prefer to do this directly. I let two stagecoaches drive daily,
and nobody sits in them. — You know the other thing that
happened in the Bavarian Medical Board: there one asked the
learnt gentlemen because of unhealthy effects whether it is
good for the nervous system if one builds railways. The
gentlemen said that it would be impractical to the highest
degree, because this would cause serious impairments of the
nervous system.

This as an illustration of the relation of the practitioners,
if it concerns the questions of the day, to those who look out
with a more farsighted look at the future. The latter notorious
idealists who are not stuck in that which is usual since time
immemorial are the real practitioners. From this point of view,
the spiritual-scientific worldview also appears as an engine
for the practise of many questions and of ours. Hence, somebody
who treats the questions from a higher point of view may accept
such a reproach quietly and remember the other examples where
people who believe to have the monopoly of practise judged in
such a way.

Few
people deny that the question of women's rights is one of the
biggest questions of our present civilisation, because this has
become a fact today. There are opponents of certain views in
the question of women's rights, but nobody denies that it
exists. Nevertheless, if we look back at times not so long ago,
even important people regarded the question of women's rights
as something fantastic, as something that had to be suppressed
by any available means.

One
example: I would like to remind you of the explanations of a
significant man, the anatomist Albert (Eduard A., 1841-1900,
Bohemian surgeon), who vehemently opposed the licensing of the
women to the academic professions 25 years ago. He wanted to
prove from the point of view of his anatomical-physiological
science that it is impossible that women get licensing to the
academic professions that they would be able to fill the
medical profession one day. With the big authority of the
physical science, one cannot be astonished at all that one
gives those credit for a judgement, who were in the know of the
human being because of their scientific views. Still recently,
the witty pamphlet has appeared here in Germany, On the
Physiological Mental Deficiency of the Woman. This pamphlet
is due to a man who is, however, by no means a quite
unimportant physiologist, Möbius (Paul Julius M.,
1853-1907, neurologist), who has said some good things, who has
not disgraced himself but his physiological science, while he
made various important persons of the world-historical
development of the last time like Goethe, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche appear as pathological phenomena. He did that so
absurdly and radically that one would have to ask with every
genius of the spiritual life: where is insanity in him,
actually? — Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, they all are
treated from the point of view of psychiatry, of the
psychological pathology.

If
one goes deeper into these matters, they all fall in a category
that is characterised by the example of a famous naturalist who
wanted to deduce the minor talent of the woman from the lower
weight of the female brain some time ago. It is no fable: the
man stated that the size of the mind depends on the size of the
brain, and that on average women have smaller brains than men
have. It really happened that one applied the method of this
scholar to him. One weighed his brain after his death, and it
came to light that he had just an abnormally small brain, a
much smaller brain than those women had whom he had just
regarded as inferior because of their lower cerebral weight. It
would be somewhat malicious if one tried to examine such a
pamphlet once from the psycho-pathological point of view, like
this about the physiological mental deficiency of the woman,
and if one tried to use the result against the concerning
author as against the professor Bischoff (Theodor von B.,
1807-1882, physician, biologist).

Thus, you see that the question of women's rights does not
exactly testify that those were very judicious who opposed it.
The question of women's rights is much more comprehensive than
the question of the licensing of the women to the learned
professions, than the educational question of the women; the
question of women's rights encloses an economic, social, and
psychological aspect and still some other matters. However,
just the educational question of the women has shown wonderful
fruits in the facts. Almost all theoretical judgements have
been disproved by the practise in this field.

Bit
by bit the women have ground out the licensing of the most
professions against the opinions of the men's world, to those
of the lawyers, doctors, philologists et cetera. The women took
up these professions under substantially more unfavourable
conditions than the men. One must only take into consideration,
under which unfavourable conditions the women recently have
approached the universities. It is easy with the normal
pre-educational background; however, the women came with an
insufficient preparatory training. They have overcome all
difficulties in a large part not only with tremendous diligence
but also with comprehensive abilities. They were in no way
inferior to the men, concerning sobriety or diligence, or the
mental abilities, so that the practise has solved this matter
completely differently than some people theoretically imagined
twenty to thirty years ago. Various professors, led by their
prejudices, denied the women the access to the universities.
Today many women with completed professional training know what
life is about and they are as judicious and reasonable as the
men are.

However, this only lights up the external situation, and it
just shows us that we have to look deeper into the human being,
into the being of the woman if we want to understand the whole
matter. For there is nobody today who is not touched anyhow by
the importance of this question. Even if the woman has ground
out the licensing to the learned professions, also to numerous
other occupations, even if in practice a big part of the
question of women's rights is solved: if we want to advance
consciously and reasonably, if we want to discuss this question
in all directions, we have to look deeper into the human
being.

What has one not spoken about the difference between man and
woman! You can read it already everywhere in short overviews
how differently one assessed the difference between man and
woman and how one wanted to form a view about this question
from these assessments. A lot has been written about the
psychological aspect of the question of women's rights. There
is no better book about this aspect, as far as a
non-theosophist has written it, than that of a spirited woman
who is generally active in the present literature: To
Critics of Femininity by Rosa Mayreder (1858-1938, Austrian
author, feminist). You can find the judgements somewhere else,
let only some of them pass by. There we have a man Lombroso
(Cesare L., 1835-1909, Italian physician, criminologist). He
characterises the woman in such a way: her feeling of devotion
and dependence is in the centre of her mental character. George
Egerton (pen name of Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright, 1859-1945,
feminist) says that any woman, considering a man impartially,
looks at him as a big child and that just from that her
domineering nature comes, so that the domineering nature moves
into the centre of the woman's soul more and more. A great
naturalist, Virchow (Rudolf V., 1821-1902), says that, if one
studies the woman externally physiologically, one finds
gentleness, mildness, and calmness at the bottom of her being.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939, physician), a good expert of the
matter as well, says that the characteristic of the female soul
is a choleric temperament, initiative, and bravado. Möbius
finds the characteristic of the woman's mind in conservatism.
Being conservative is the real life element of the woman's
soul. Let us confront that with the judgement of an old, good
soul expert, Hippel (Theodor Gottlieb H., 1741-1796, author,
On Improving the Status of Women, 1792). He says that
the woman is the real revolutionist of humanity. Go to the
people, there you find a quite peculiar, but quite popular
judgement about the relation between reason, passion, and soul
with man and woman. On the other side, have a look at
Nietzsche's judgement. He says that the woman preferably has
reason, the man soul and passion. Compare this with the popular
judgement, it is just the opposite.

We
could talk a lot that way and register those judgements on one
side, which attribute all passive, all weak qualities to the
woman, on the other side those judgements, which just say the
opposite. Nevertheless, certainty is lacking if so different
judgements are possible.

Also the natural sciences have dealt a lot with the question
and they are held in high esteem. However, also the statements
of the naturalists contradict themselves concerning the real
basic character of the woman. If we go over from the
naturalists and psychologists to the history of civilisation
and adhere to that which is always said: the man is the
actually creative one, the woman is more the companion, the
reproducing one, then such a judgement, would be impaired by
the fact that one considers too short an interval. One needs
only to look around a little bit with those peoples who show
old cultural leftovers, or with primitive tribes, and one needs
only to pursue the developmental history of humanity, then one
sees that there were times and that there are even today such
peoples where the woman participates in the male workings most
eminently.

Briefly speaking, the assessments fluctuate in every direction.
It must appear even more conspicuous to us that the woman of a
nation differs from the man of the same nation much less than
the woman of this nation from the woman of another nation. We
can conclude from this that we are not allowed to say: man and
woman, but that beside the gender character possibly something
may be that is much more important in the human society than
the gender character and that is independent of this gender
character. Just if one looks impartially at the human being,
one can normally differentiate what is necessarily connected
with the relations of the genders and what goes beyond these
relations and points to quite different regions. Indeed, a
materialistic view of the world and the human being which at
first only sees the palpable and obvious, sees the big
physiological differences of man and woman, of course.
Somebody, who is stuck in this materialistic view, simply
overlooks what is much bigger and more drastic than the gender
differences; he overlooks the individuality that goes beyond
the gender, beyond that which is dependent on the gender. It
must be the task of a worldview directed to the spirit to
consider the human being correctly.

Before we consider the question of women's rights from this
point of view, we want to present something to us of that which
the question of women's rights constitutes today. One speaks of
a question of women's rights in the general, but also this is
an impossible generalisation like the concept of the woman. One
should not speak, actually, of the question of women's rights
in the general, because this question changes according to the
different social classes of humanity. Does the same question of
women's rights exist possibly in the lower classes, in the
classes of the labourers, as in the educated ones? The lower
classes, the real labourers, strive with all available means
for getting the women from the factory and from the trade to
give them to the family. The higher classes strive for exactly
the opposite. They strive for the possibility that the women in
the families get the possibility to work in the public life.
This is something of the social aspect of the question of
women's rights.

Of
course, the general social question of women's rights exists
besides which demands the same rights for the women in
political and cultural respect as the men have them. People
have the view today that one speaks, actually, of matters that
would have to result from the nature of humanity itself.
However, one does not think that the life of humanity changes
much faster than at the first glance. A man who dealt from his
political point of view also with the question of women's
rights, Naumann (Friedrich N., 1860-1919, Protestant pastor and
liberal politician), endeavoured once to study the negotiations
of the St. Paul's Church of 1848 concerning this matter in
which many human rights were discussed. One debated the natural
rights of the human beings back and forth. However, he could
nowhere find that these rights should be applied to men and
women in the same way. This crossed nobody's mind. The question
of women's rights came to this direction only in the second
half of the 19th century. Hence, it probably seems justified to
put the other question: where from does it result that this
aspect of the question of women's rights has only been rolled
up in our time? — Let us realise this completely.

One
shows the question of women's rights from the male and female
view in such a way, as if only now the woman must get a
significant influence on all areas of life. In certain
respects, the arguments reveal a big short-sightedness, because
you must ask yourselves, did the women not have any influence
in former times? Were they always enslaved beings only? It
would be a lack of knowledge if one wanted to argue that way.
Let us look at the Renaissance age and consult one of the most
common books, Burckhardt's (Jacob B., 1818-1897, Swiss
historian of art) book about the Renaissance (The
Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860). There we
see which deep influence the women had got, for example, on the
whole spiritual life of Italy, how the women stood in the
foreground of this spiritual life, how they were equal to the
men and played great roles. Finally, would one have spoken
about the women's lack of influence in the first half of the
19th century compared with such a personality as Rahel
Varnhagen (1771-1833, writer) was? She would have been highly
surprised that one raises such a subject. She would not have
understood at all how one gets around to thinking in such a
way.

But
many a man who exercises his general voting right today or even
debates in the parliament and delivers long speeches is really
a mere nobody if one considers the whole cultural process which
the above-mentioned woman caused. Who studies the spiritual
life of the first half of the 19th century and sees, which
influence this woman had on the men of the 19th century is no
longer tempted to say that the woman was a being without
influence at that time. The matter is simply based on the fact
that the views have changed. At that time, one did not believe
that one needs a general voting right that one has to debate in
the parliaments that one has to study at the university to have
great influence on the cultural process. One had other views in
any direction. I do not say that with a conservative intention,
but as evidence of the fact that the whole question is a
product of our present civilisation and can be put only today
as it is put, and can be put only in all areas of life today,
not only in the field of education, of the higher spiritual
education.

Have a look at the relation of man and woman in former times
when still other economic conditions existed. Have a look at
the farmer and his wife in former centuries. One cannot say
that the farm woman had less rights than the farmer, or a lower
sphere of activity. She had to care for a certain realm and he
for another. The same applied to the craft. What has become,
actually, the question of women's rights today in the working
classes has originated because during the last centuries, and
in particular in the last century our civilisation has become a
decidedly male civilisation. The machine age is a product of
the male civilisation, and simply the way of this civilisation
limits the activity of the woman more than the former economic
life limited it. The woman does not fit into the factory, and
completely different calamities result from it compared with
the conditions when she was occupied in the farmyard, at home
or in the old craft as a manager or co-worker.

Also in relation to the learned professions, everything has
changed in our whole life, in our view. The whole esteem of the
learned professions has become another one. It is not yet long
ago that that which one understands today as a learned
profession was more or less a kind of a higher craft only. It
was a way to be professionally active in the law, medicine, and
it would not have crossed anybody's mind before relatively
short time to derive a kind of religious worldview from that
which medicine, law, natural sciences offered. It is the
special science of that which is investigated in the
laboratory, which has become bit by bit the domain of the men
from which a higher worldview is attained. Against this, once
religion and philosophy hovered like a spirit over all matters
that were done in the faculties, and a higher education was
only to be found in them.

The
actually human, that which spoke to the soul, that which spoke
about his longing for eternity, that which gave the human being
strength and assurance in his life that was common to man and
woman. This arose from another spring than from the laboratory
or from the physiological investigation. One could come without
any university education to the highest heights of
philosophical and religious education. One was able to do this
any time, also as a woman. Only because the materialistic age
has made the so-called positive sciences with their so-called
facts the basis of the higher problems, a train of the heart, a
longing of the soul had to drive the woman to look herself into
the secrets, which the microscope, the telescope, the
investigations of physiology and biology reveal to us. As long
as one did not think that anything about life and immortality
could be decided by the microscope, as long as one knew that
this truth must be taken from completely different sources,
such a desire for scientific studies could not arise as it is
today. We must hold this against ourselves that the direction
of our time has produced this drive for the university
education, and that generally the question of women's rights is
put in the whole way of the civilisation of our time.

However, a movement almost disregarded up to now, the
spiritual-scientific view, opposes everything that this new age
has brought, that is founded on an only material base. The
spiritual-scientific worldview has to solve the vital question
and has to co-operate in all cultural currents and cultural
attempts of the future. One cannot misjudge this worldview more
than believing that it is nothing but the chimera of some
daydreamers. It is the result of the spiritual research of
those who know the needs and the longing of our time best of
all and take it most seriously. Only those who want to know
nothing about the needs of our time can keep off this eminently
practical world movement intervening in all questions.
Spiritual science is nothing that indulges in an infertile
criticism, nothing conservative. It considers it as something
beneficiary and reckons that materialism has appeared last
century.

It
was a necessity that the old religious feelings and traditions
lost their validity compared with the claims of the natural
sciences. Spiritual science understands how it happened that
the physiologist and the biologist deny immortality even if he
also does not concede it. That had to happen this way. However,
humanity will never be able to live without looking up, without
knowledge of the real supersensible spiritual things. A short
time only one will be able to go on working as it has come
about today with the specified science and with that which
often comes from this direction as a religious result or
non-result. However, the time will come when one feels that the
springs of the spirit must be disclosed in life. Spiritual
science is the outpost of this struggle for development of the
real spiritual springs of humanity. On a much broader base
spiritual science is able to tell humanity again about the
being of the soul, about that which towers above the transient
and passing. On a broader base than it ever was the case in the
popular world, spiritual science will announce what gives
assurance, strength, courage and perseverance in life what can
light up those questions which occupy the everyday life and are
to be solved not only from the material side.

It
is a peculiar chance — some will understand it —
that at the starting point of the theosophical movement a woman
stood, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. One experienced the
incredible example, just here, that a woman with the most
comprehensive sense, with the most urgent power and with mental
energy composed writings compared with which really everything
that the intellectual culture has otherwise produced is a
trifle. Believe nothing of that which you can read about
so-called esoteric doctrines, which insights of the spiritual
world you read possibly in Isis Unveiled or in the
so-called Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky. Believe nothing
of that, but consult the book and ask yourselves how many
spirits of the present have known anything more powerful about
so many matters than Blavatsky did. The two immense volumes of
the Secret Doctrine give information about almost all
fields of the spiritual life, about ancient cultures, ancient
religions, about all possible branches of the natural sciences,
about the social life, about astronomy, physiology. May that be
wrong, which you read therein, but I ask you who is able to say
even wrong things about all these fields proficiently and to
show with it that he has familiarised himself emphatically with
all that? You need not only consider the correctness, but also
the comprehensiveness of the mind which you cannot deny, then
you have the example of a woman who has shown not only in any
branch of the intellectual culture, but in the whole spiritual
life what the female mind can perform concerning a higher
worldview. Even if one reads Max Müller's (1823-1900,
Orientalist) religious-historical treatises and compares their
contents with the comprehensive of the Secret Doctrine,
one sees how much the latter towers over the first. Thus, it is
a peculiar chance that a woman stands at the starting point of
this theosophical movement. One may explain that just from
those matters which have also shown us the question of women's
rights as a birth from our present spiritual life.

If
we look deeper into the spiritual development of the human
beings, then that, which can, astonish us otherwise, may appear
to us as a necessity in the history of thought. However, to be
able to do this in fertile way, we have to go into the human
nature briefly. We want to outline the human nature with a few
brief strokes.

The
spiritual-scientific research, theosophy, regards that which
materialism and the everyday worldview know of the human being
only as a part of the human being. I can only give you some
outlines today, not daydreams, but matters that are as certain
as mathematical judgements for the mathematicians. What the
usual science knows of the human being is his physical body.
This physical body has the same physical and chemical forces,
principles, and substances, which one finds outdoors in the
so-called lifeless nature. The forces that form the dead stone
outdoors and the “life” in the stone are the same
in the physical body of the human being.

However, the spiritual-scientific worldview still sees
additional members of the human nature, at first the second
member that the human being has together with all plants.
Modern science already speaks speculating about something that
spiritual science aims at, about a particular life principle,
because the reasonable scientists have overcome the laws of
materialism, which still applied to many people fifteen years
ago. Nevertheless, the modern physical research will only
extrapolate this second human member speculatively. However,
the theosophical spiritual research refers to the testimony of
those who have higher intuitive faculties who relate to the
usual average human being as a sighted person relates to a
blind one. It refers to the testimony of such persons who know
this second human member as something real, as something that
exists. Someone who knows nothing does not have the right to
judge, as little as the blind person has a right to judge about
colours.

Any
talking of the limits of the human knowledge is nonsense. One
should ask, is the human being not able to rise to a higher
level of knowledge? May that not be real which one calls
spiritual eyes and ears? There have always been human beings
who developed certain slumbering abilities and who can thereby
see more than others can. Their testimony must apply exactly
the same way as the testimony of those who look through the
microscope. How many people have seen what the evolution theory
teaches? I would like to ask you, how many human beings have
seen that about which they talk? How many people, for example,
have clear proofs of the development of the human embryo? If
they introspected, they would see what a belief controls them.
If it is a justified belief, that belief is also justified,
which rests on the testimony of the initiates who speak about
their spiritual experience.

We
speak of the second member of the human being. We find the same
in the Christian religion with Paul, who called it spiritual
body. We speak about the etheric or life body. A certain sum of
chemical and physical forces would never crystallise to life if
they were not formed in particular by that which penetrates
every living body as a life body or etheric body. The human
being has it in common with the whole plant and animal realms.
However, a plant does not have impulses, desires, and passions.
A plant feels no joy and sorrow, because one cannot speak of
any sensation if one sees that a being only reacts to something
external. One can speak of sensation only if the external
stimulus is reflected inside, if it is there as an internal
experience. This part of modern physiology, which speaks of a
sensory body of the plant, only shows a tremendous dilettantism
in the view of such concepts.

Where the animal life begins, where joy and sorrow, where
impulses, desires and passions begin, one speaks of the third
member of the human being, of the astral body. The human being
has it in common with the whole animal realm. Now there is one
thing that reaches within the human being beyond the animal
realm and makes him the crown of creation. We realise it best
considering it subtly.

There is a name within the German language, which differs from
all other names. Everybody can say “table” to a
table. However, one name cannot be applied that way. Nobody can
say to me “I”, so that it would signify me.
“I” can never sound to our ears if it signifies me.
One felt this always as something essential. Even in the
popular older religions, one found that there is an important
point of the soul. Where the soul starts feeling the divine in
itself, where it starts saying in this dialogue with itself to
itself “I,” speaking with itself in such a way as
from the outside cannot be spoken, there the divine being of
the soul begins its development in the human being. The god in
the human being announces himself there. The old Hebrew secret
doctrine had felt this. Therefore, one called this name the
inexpressible name of God that means, “I am the
I-am.”

According to the Old Testament, the name signifies the
announcement of the godhead in the human soul. Therefore,
immense emotions and sensations penetrated the crowd when the
priest announced this name of the godhead in the soul:
Jahveh.

This is the fourth member in the human being where his external
nature ends and his divinity begins. We have now seen how the
human being is led as it were by external forces up to the
“I”, the ego. There he stands, and from there he
starts working in himself. This ego works down into the three
other parts of the human being. Realise the difference between
the human beings from this point of view. Compare a savage to a
European average person, to a noble idealist, possibly Schiller
(1759-1805, German poet) or Francis of Assisi (1181/1182-1226,
Italian Catholic friar and preacher).

If
the astral body is the bearer of desire and passion, we have to
say, the astral body of the savage is surrounded by the powers
of nature; however, the European average person has worked
something into his astral body.

He
says of certain passions and desires to himself: you are not
allowed to follow them. — He has reshaped his astral
body. Such a personality like Schiller transformed it even
more, even more such a personality that is not related to the
passions like Francis of Assisi who was completely purified and
who was master of all impulses and desires in his astral body.
Thus, you can say that the astral body of someone who worked on
himself consists of two parts. One part is given by nature, by
divinities; the other part is that which he himself has
produced therein. We call this second part, transformed by the
ego, the spirit self or manas.

Now
there are matters that go deeper into the human nature where
the ego works only in the astral body. As long as you tame your
vices with the mere principles of morality or law, with logical
principles, you work on your astral body. However, there are
other cultural means, namely the religious impulses of humanity
by which the ego works on itself. What comes from religion is a
working engine of the spiritual life, is more than external
principles of law and morality. If the ego works because of
religious impulses, it works into the etheric body.

Also, if the ego is merged in the consideration of a piece of
art and receives an inkling that behind the sensuous existence
anything everlasting, anything concealed may be embodied, then
the artistic image works not only in the astral body, but the
human being improves and purifies the etheric body. If you were
able to observe as practical occultist how an opera by Wagner
(Richard W., 1813-1883, German composer) works on the different
human members, it would persuade you that the vibrations of
music deeply penetrate the etheric body.

The
etheric body is also the bearer of everything that is more or
less remaining in the human nature. You have to realise which
difference is between the development of the etheric body and
the astral body. Let us remember our own lives. Think about
what you have learnt since your eighth year; this is very much.
Consider the contents of your soul: principles, ideas et
cetera. These are transformations of your astral bodies. Now
think how little customs, temperaments, and abilities of most
human beings change in general.

If
anybody has a bad temper, this became apparent early on and has
changed a little. If one was a forgetful child, he is a
forgetful person even today. One can use a small example of
this disparate development. This development behaves in such a
way, as if the changes of the astral body are shown by the
minute hand and the changes of the etheric body by the hour
hand of the clock. What the human being changes in his etheric
body, what the ego has made of the etheric body, one calls
buddhi or — if one wants to use an English word —
life spirit.

However, there is an even higher development, which the chela
experiences, because one becomes another human being in the
etheric body. If the usual human being learns, he learns with
the astral body. If the student of the esoteric science learns,
he becomes another human being. There his habits and his
temperament must change. For this makes the difference that
allows us to behold into other worlds. His etheric body is
gradually transformed there.

It
is the most difficult for the human being to learn to work into
his physical body. One can also become master of the blood
circulation; one can get influence on the nervous system,
influence on the respiratory process et cetera. One can also
learn that. If the human being is able to work into his
physical body and learns to be connected with the universe,
then he develops his atman. This is the highest human member,
and because it is associated with the development of the
respiratory process, one says atman (Sanskrit, German
atmen = breathe). Then the spirit man is found in the physical
human being.

Thus, we have seven human members, just as the rainbow has
seven colours and the scale has seven tones. So the human being
consists of the physical body, secondly of the etheric body,
thirdly of the astral body, in fourth place of the ego, fifthly
of manas, sixthly of buddhi, seventhly of atman. When the human
being arrives at the highest level of development, when he
makes his physical body, then we have the spirit man.

Concerning our today's question, we have to look closer at this
being, at this nature of the human being. There a riddle of the
relations between man and woman is solved out of the human
nature in a peculiar way. Just esotericism or this intimate
consideration of the human nature leads into the physical body,
into the etheric body, into the astral body, into the ego and
into that which the ego has made.

With every human being — this is a fact — the
etheric body is dyadic, and the etheric body of the man as it
lives among us presents itself with female qualities, and the
etheric body of the woman with male qualities. Plenty of facts
in our life are explained if we know that in the man something
is of the female nature, and just that which we have discussed
as dependent on the etheric body has more female nature with
the man and more male nature with the woman. Hence, one can
understand that certain traits can appear with the man. In
truth, we never have in the physical material human being
something else before us than a physical expression of a
complete personality. The human soul builds the body as the
magnet has two poles. It forms a male part and a female part,
once one part as a physical body, the other time as an etheric
body. Hence, the woman shows apparently male traits connected
with the etheric body: devotion, bravery, and love; the man
shows rather female traits sometimes. However, with reference
to all traits which are connected more to the physical body the
consequence of the gender appears in the external life.

Therefore, it must seem explicable that we have in every human
being — if we want to look at him completely — an
appearance before us with two parts, an open material one and a
concealed one, the spiritual one. Somebody is only an entire
human being who is able to connect inside a female nice
character with external masculinity. The greatest spirits, in
particular the mystics, always felt this in our past cultural
life.

This is an important point. The man played a great role,
because materialism pushed to the external civilisation. This
external civilisation is a male civilisation because it should
be a material civilisation. However, we have to be clear to
ourselves that also in the world-historical evolution the
culture epochs take turns, and that this one-sided male
civilisation must find its complement by that which lives in
every man. One felt this just in the time of the male
civilisation. Hence, the mystics if they spoke about the
deepest of their souls also called this soul something female.
That is why everywhere you find the comparison of the soul with
the woman receptive to the world, and on that, Goethe's saying
is based in the Chorus Mysticus (Faust II):

All that is transitory
is only a symbol;
what seems unachievable
here becomes fact;
what's indescribable
here it is done;
the eternally-female
draws us upwards.

It
is nonsense to interpret the saying trivially. In the sense of
Goethe and of true mysticism one interprets it correctly
saying, someone who has known something of noble spiritual
culture has also pointed to the female character of the soul.
Just from the male culture the saying originated, “the
eternally-female draws us upwards.” Thus, one imagined
the macrocosm, the universe, as male and the soul as female,
which is fertilized by the universal wisdom.

What is this peculiar attitude, the logics, developing in the
man for millennia? If we want to look into its depth, we have
to see something female, the imagination, which the male
principle has to fertilise.

Thus, we see the higher nature of the human being, if we
consider what outgrows the gender difference. Man and woman
have to regard their physical bodies as tools, which enable
them to be active as a totality in the physical world in one or
other direction. The more the human beings feel the spiritual
in themselves, the more the body becomes the instrument,
however, the more they also learn to understand the human
being, if they look into the depth of the soul.

Indeed, this gives you no solution of the question of women's
rights, but a perspective. You cannot solve this question with
trends and ideals! You have to solve it in the reality,
creating that soul image, that soul constitution, which makes
it possible that man and woman understand each other from the
view of the totality of human nature. As long as the human
being is prejudiced in the material, a fertile consideration of
the question of women's rights is not possible.

Therefore, you must not be surprised that in an age which has
born the male culture the spiritual culture, which began in the
theosophical movement, should almost be born from a woman.
Thus, this theosophical or spiritual-scientific movement will
turn out to be eminently practical. It will guide humanity to
overcome the gender in itself and to rise to a point of view
where spirit-self and atman are which are transpersonal and
beyond the genders, the purely human. Theosophy does not speak
about the general humanisation, but about the general human, so
that it is recognised gradually. Thus, a similar consciousness
awakes in the woman gradually as it has awoken in the man
during the male culture.

As
someone of those who have deeply spoken about the soul said:
the eternally female draws us upwards, those will understand
spiritual-scientifically who feel the other side of the human
being as a woman in themselves. They speak about it in the
correct practical sense, about the eternally-male in the female
nature, and then true understanding and true mental solution of
the question of women's rights is possible. For the external
nature is a physiognomy of the soul life. We have nothing else
in our external culture than that which the human beings have
created what they have transformed in machines out of their
impulses, in industrial matters, in the law. As the soul
develops, the external institutions develop. However, an age
that stuck to the external physiognomy wanted to build barriers
between man and woman. An age which does no longer stick to the
external, to the material but has the knowledge of the inside
beyond the genders, wants to improve and embellish the sexual,
without wanting to crawl away to the wasteland, to asceticism
or to deny the sexual, and wants to live in that which is
beyond the genders. Then one will understand what brings the
true solution of the question of women's rights because it
offers the true solution of the everlasting human question at
the same time. One will no longer say when one speaks of things
of the everyday life: the eternally female draws us up, one
will also no longer say, the eternally male draws us upwards,
one will say with deep understanding: the eternally-human draws
us upwards.